


Dirk Gently's Holistic Dating Agency

by CaptainKirby



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Confusion, First Dates, Mystery, Poor Todd, connected
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-08 09:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11644089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainKirby/pseuds/CaptainKirby
Summary: Date the whole personEnjoy the whole datePhone today for the whole solution to your relationship problemsDirk really wished he ran this kind of a business instead his detective one, because he finally met a girl who has caught his full attention, and he doesn't know what to do.





	1. Dirk At First Sight

I left him alone for literally thirty seconds to get our coffee from the Starbucks barista. Thirty, god damn seconds. And by the time I got back, Dirk had already gotten himself into something. A gaunt man had stolen my seat and Dirk’s attention. A burgundy suitcase leaned up against his chair with a large piece of tape across it with the word “IMPORTANT” scrawled on it.

“Hmm… I see. We’ll take the case.”

“What case?” I asked.

“Ah, Todd! Great timing!” Dirk said as he took his coffee from me, “This is Henry Henderson, local mortician and hearse driver. Henry, this is my accomplice and slacker extraordinaire, Todd!”

“Hey!”

“Oh, you know I’m right.” Dirked replied. And he had a point. I slacked so hard my parents went nearly broke.

“Nice to meet you.” Henry said, in a slow, gruff tone. He reached out a shaky, pale hand. I shook it as politely and as quickly as possible.

Henry turned back to Dirk, “And here is your upfront payment, as well as some relevant documents.” He put the suitcase on the table with a thud. Henry then stood up and walked out of the Starbucks.

“So… what was that?” I ask. I reclaim my seat and start drinking my coffee. Bad move.

“Oh, that nice man has just hired us to find a corpse.”

I nearly spit my coffee out. “A… A corpse? How do you lose a corpse? It’s not exactly going anywhere”

“Yes. He believes that someone must have stolen it.”

“Do you only get bizarre, wacko cases?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve been asked to find a corpse by a mortician, and last week there was that lady with the leather jacket.”

“You mean Farah? Because I do agree she’s quite odd sometimes.”

“No! The one who hired us to retrieve some sort of magical stone?”

“Right! Her! You know, I’ve always wanted to go after a sort of… sorcerer’s stone.” Dirk smiled as his clever little reference.

“Should we look at what Henry gave us?”

“No. I don’t think it’s really all that useful. At least not now.” Dirk said as he picked up the suitcase and headed for the exit. He forgot his coffee at the table, so I had to throw it out for him. One of these days, I’m going to stop cleaning up after him. But I have a feeling it’ll be a while until I am allowed that dignity. I half-ran to catch back up with Dirk.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t really know. How about this way?” Dirk replied as he turned down a back alley.

“What? No!” I grabbed Dirk by the collar of his bright yellow jacket.

“Why are you stopping me?”

“Because there’s nothing down there except rats and a possible mugging.”

“Well, you’re not wrong. But I can almost assure you we won’t be the ones on the receiving end of the mugging.” Dirk replied as he gestured down the alley. Three silhouettes stood at the far end of the alley. Two of them were backed up against a wall that had been accruing filth since the fifties, while the third threatened them with a small glimmering object that must’ve been a knife. It screamed something among the lines of “hand it over”

“C’mon!” Dirk said as he broke free of my now weakened grasp. I started to voice my objection, but realized it would be fruitless, and chased after him instead. I nearly tripped over all of the garbage strewn about.

“Stop! You common criminal!” Dirk shouted. I caught up to him and got a much better view of the three people. The man with the knife was surprisingly well dressed to be in an alley way like this. However, his face fit the part, dominated by ruggedness and wrinkles.

The victims against the wall were two young girls, probably eighteen years old. One of them wore mostly black, including black leather boots. She had a defiant look on her face, and she stood just in front of the other girl, who was nearly the opposite color wise. Her skin was quite pale, and she wore a colorful t-shirt along with faded and ripped jeans.

The man turned to Dirk and me and just looked at us confusedly. After a few seconds, the two girls did the same.

“Put down your weapon and we can all go on our merry ways.” Dirk said.

“Why?” the man asked.

“You realize he has a knife, right?” I whispered to Dirk.

“Yes, but I have something better!” Dirk reached to his side and… grabbed nothing.

“What did you expect to have?” I asked.

“Well, you know Farah gave me that present a while ago…”

“The gun?”

“Yeah…”

“We left that at your apartment!” I shouted, “I wasn’t going to let you bring a gun to Starbucks!”

“I know, I know” Dirk said disappointedly, “I… I guess I just got caught up in everything. I saw a man with a knife, and then I remember that one saying I kept getting wrong about the knife and the gun and the fight, and I thought I had it covered for once…” As Dirk rambled on, the man with the knife just cocked his head to the side and lowered his weapon, in complete disbelief. He did not think this was how today was going to go. He knew it wasn’t going to be a normal day for him, but this was a bit much.

However, the girl in black was not anywhere near as enthralled with Dirk and me. She picked up a discarded bird house. The man noticed where I had turned my attention, but the girl attacked before he could do anything. She smashed the bird house into his head so hard, the crude woodworking project shattered. As the man fell to his knees, the girl in black grabbed her friend’s hand and ran out of the alley way. Dirk and I followed, not wanting to experience the wrath of a man who had just been attacked with a bird house.

All four of us ran and ran, until we all stopped at in front of the Starbucks. We collected our breath for a while, before the girl in black walked over to Dirk and me, and found enough breath to get a “thanks” out.

“All… in a day’s work.” Dirk replied between gasps for air.

“Not that we really did much.” I said, mostly to myself. We put the conversation on pause until we could finish a sentence without pausing to pant.

“What are your names?” I eventually asked.

“I’m Jessica” the girl in black said, “And—“

“I’m Emily.” The other girl said, she held her hand out to Dirk, “Thanks for… whatever you did.”

Dirk looked completely flabbergasted. His eyes took in as much of Emily as they possibly could. Everything from her blond hair, to the long fingernails on her hands. I elbowed Dirk to snap him back to reality.

“N-no problem.” He said. Dirk took Emily’s hand and shook it, but he held on for much longer than appropriate.

To put an end to the awkward moment, Jessica turned to me, “I mean… I know this isn’t much, but could we maybe buy you guys coffee as thanks? We are right here and all.”

“No th—“

“Of course!” Dirk interrupted me. We had just gotten coffee five minutes ago. But Dirk didn’t care. And I could tell, because, for some reason, he never took his eyes off of Emily. And he hadn't let go of her hand either.


	2. Wooing Her Gently

This time, I didn’t have to get the coffee for everyone. I mean, I would have, but Jessica insisted she get it. So, I sat at the table, keeping a watch on that suitcase that Henry Henderson the Mortician had given us. In the meantime, Dirk asked Emily about everything except the mugging, which was surprisingly well-mannered of him. But I am inclined to believe that it was because Dirk no longer cared about the back-alley incident. He just wanted to learn about her. He asked her about what she had been doing this summer (working as a waitress at a nearby bistro), where she attended school (she had just graduated from Ericson High, and was going to start at UCLA in the fall), and if she wanted his jacket, since her hands felt cold earlier (she politely declined).

When Jessica got back she sat across from me and watched Dirk Gently try his hardest to conduct a somewhat normal conversation.

“So, what do you do for a living?” Emily eventually asked Dirk. He gave her a bright smile as he launched into the monologue he must’ve given a thousand times by now.

“I am a holistic detective. I solve the whole mystery that I am presented with by stumbling my way to an answer. My colleague and I here don’t believe of much in the way of fingerprints or DNA analysis. The interconnectedness of the world is much more subtle than any of us could imagine…” As Dirk continued on, Jessica turned to me.

“You guys are detectives?”

“I mean, sort of.” I replied, “Mostly him. I’m just here to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. And as you could see from earlier, I don’t do a great job.”

Jessica laughed a little, “Well, thanks for doing a shitty job then.”

“Speaking of my job, I guess I should ask, what were you doing in that back alley?”

“We weren’t down there by choice exactly. The man who was attacking us had dragged us in there.”

“He just picked you two out of the crowd?”

“Well, we don’t exactly look like the kind of people who would put up much of a fight.” I couldn’t argue with her there. Jessica and Emily did not look like much in general. Just some nondescript teenagers enjoying summer.

“We should probably exchange contact information.” Dirk interjected, “You know… because—“

“We might need you guys as witnesses if that man sues us.” Emily said. Dirk smiled at her, and they both exchanged phone numbers. Jessica and I both rolled our eyes.

I only let Dirk and Emily chat for a little longer before I dragged him away. We did have actual work to do. As we walked back to Dirk’s apartment, which we used as our makeshift headquarters, I listened to Dirk go on about how she’s a volleyball player this, and loves cats and sharks that. When we got back to HQ, Dirk put Henry’s suitcase away, and I forced him to start focusing on the other case we had. I he sat across from me at his coffee table where we had scattered what little information we had gathered about our cases we had gotten so far. A pathetic number of them were stained with pizza grease.

“So, that lady said that she had the stone taken from her at the church down on 5th street. Should we go down there to ask around?” I asked.

“Uh…. Sure?” Dirk replied.

“Do you even know where I’m talking about?”

“No… I wasn’t really listening.”

“The church! On 5th street!”

“Oh, right. I actually asked Farah to go there and check, while we went elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?”

“Yeah. Coffee.”

“You asked Farah to go to the crime scene so we could get coffee?”

“Well, it was very important that we got coffee you see…”

“Dirk. C’mon.” I knew he worked in weird ways, but this just sounded like a crazy excuse. But before I guilt tripped him any further, we heard rapid knocking on the door. Dirk and I both looked at each other, expecting the other to go answer the door. Of course, I gave in before Dirk’s felt some sort of social responsibility. I got up and let Farah in.

“Afternoon.” I said.

“It’s not even twelve.” Farah replied. This baffled me. It felt like it must’ve two, given everything that had happened so far.

“Fine, morning then.”

“Better.” Farah walked past me with her purposeful gait and promptly stole my seat at the coffee table. I had to pull up another seat.

“So, what did you learn?” I asked as I awkwardly dragged the edge of the couch across the room.

“I asked the pastor if he remembered anything strange happening that day. He didn’t really say anything useful. So, I asked him for a list of all of the people who attended the sermon.”

“Great! We can go through that and— “

“He doesn’t have one. But he did give me a list of everyone who regularly attends that church. They’re on some sort of mailing list.”

“Ok… we can go through that then.” I said. Farah pulled the list out of her pocket. I looked at Dirk to find him on his phone. He was texting someone furiously.

“Dirk?”

He nearly dropped his phone, “Yes?”

“Do you know what we’re doing?”

“Yes. Probably.”

“We’re researching the members of that one church we sent Farah to.”

“Oh, yes. Right, right. Of course.”

“So… I’m going to go home so I can use my desktop.” I said while pointing to the door.

“Right, right. Best to sleuth from the comfort of your own apartment I say. Farah, could you divide the list of people between the three of us?”

“Three of us? You know I don’t actually work here right?”

“Poppycock. It’s not like you got much else to do.” Dirk objected.

 “I… but… oh whatever. I’ll see you guys tomorrow to talk over some of the results.”

I walked back to my room where I could get some work done. It still hadn’t been fully cleaned ever since the Rowdy Three wrecked the place, but I had managed to fix some of the holes in what little free time I had. I scavenged the internet looking for the people on the list I had been given. I managed to get through about a third of my list before my stomach started growling. It had gotten late. The sun had set while I wasn’t looking. I looked in my refrigerator, and found a disappointing lack of food. Not even anything microwavable. And I was not about to call two slices of cheese and some yogurt a meal. A new café had opened up down the street that sounded good. And cheap. I walked there while whistling a jingle from a cereal commercial that I couldn’t quite force out of my head.

When I arrived, I had to request a table for one. The café was mostly empty, save for a few occupied tables in the corner. Either I missed primetime, or this was not exactly the best opening day. The host led me to a table near the clump of other guests. I sat down and heard a voice that sent chills down my spine.

“Well, you see, I had thought the saying meant that you _wanted_ to bring a knife to a gun fight. Although on further inspection of the idea, I do not know why I ever thought that.”

The girl sitting across from Dirk giggled.

“You sure do tell crazy stories. Are you an author or something?”

“No, I’m a private detective.” Dirk said proudly. I had to hold back a laugh.

“Oh really? You working any cases right now?”

“Of course! We have a surprisingly large amount of business given the field we specialize in.”

Emily leaned forward and propped her head up with the palm of her hand, “And what field is that?”

“Namely divorces and missing pets. Although we have been known to take up kidnapping, murder, and stolen property. Anything from corpses to cats, as I like to say.”

I laughed a little to myself as the waiter took my order. He’s never said that before. No need to make it sound like a catch phrase. Emily’s phone started to play a trumpet fanfare. She looked down and it and scowled.

“I’m sorry, that’s Jessica. I should probably go.”

“Of course. Don’t want to keep you too long.”

“Anyways, it was nice talking to you some more.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” Dirk said as he tipped an imaginary hat. Emily smiled and half-pranced away. Dirk sat back in his chair and smiled. He did good. At least, that’s what he thought. Until I let out a loud whistle from right behind him.

“Bloody hell!” He shouted as he turned around to find me smirking at him, “Oh… it’s just you. Wait… oh damn it’s you.”

“Nice date you had there.” I said, “But that’s not exactly helping us with our case.”

“I…” Dirk dropped his head, “I know. But it’s weird. I can’t seem to stop thinking about her. Almost like our unsolved cases. She just sticks in my head and I have this impulse to… to solve her.”

“Solve her? I can’t tell if that’s creepy or… no its definitely creepy.”

“Well, I guess I should at least _try_ to look into those people Farah found for us.” Dirk said. He stood from his table and sulked toward the door.

“You haven’t even started yet?” I shouted after him.

“Not quite… I’ll get through some tonight. I swear.” he shouted back. I sat there and smiled to myself until the waiter came over with Dirk’s check. Damn it. I paid both my check and Dirk’s check before I sulked back to my apartment.


End file.
